Partitioning a Disk

The format utility is most often used by system administrators to partitioning a
disk. The steps are as follows:

Determining which slices are needed

Determining the size of each slice or partition

Using the format utility to partition the disk

Labeling the disk with new partition information

Creating the file system for each partition

The easiest way to partition a disk is to use the modify
command from the partition menu of the format utility. The modify command allows
you to create partitions by specifying the size of each partition without having
to keep track of the starting cylinder boundaries. The modify command also keeps
tracks of any disk space that remains in the “free hog” slice.

Partition Table Terminology

An important part of the disk label is the partition table. The partition table
identifies a disk's slices, the slice boundaries (in cylinders), and the total size
of the slices. You can display a disk's partition table by using the
format utility. The following describes partition table terminology.

Using the Free Hog Slice

When you use the format utility to change the size of one or
more disk slices, you designate a temporary slice that will expand and shrink
to accommodate the resizing operations.

This temporary slice donates, or “frees,” space when you expand a slice, and
receives, or “hogs,” the discarded space when you shrink a slice. For this
reason, the donor slice is sometimes called the free hog.

The free hog slice exists only during installation or when you run
the format utility. There is no permanent free hog slice during day-to-day operations.

For information on using the free hog slice, see the following sections: